1/20/2008

ITV News At Ten - Cocking up and Sucking Up

Lots of people, particularly the Tories seem to believe that there is a bias in the BBC's reporting of politics that is unfairly weighted against them, and some, rather ignorantly, hailed the return of the ITV News at Ten as a "counterweight" to the BBC. Only, the truth is that ITV's News at Ten have already shown a tendency to let the government off the hook for "favours". Although this hasn't stopped Sir Trevor McDonald (Stuffed Shirt of the Year 1989-2007) from managing to cause the cock up of the year and throwing away a golden opportunity for a scoop over the BBC.

ITV had been granted an "exclusive", by Gordon Brown inviting Sir Trevor McDonald to be the first ever journalist to be able to film during a proper cabinet meeting. The only problem is, as The Scum on Sunday reports, he failed to turn up to this exclusive meeting, indeed, nobody was able to contact him. ITV claim that the time had been changed and that Sir Trevor had made no mistake. Only, if this were true, why did they try to send Julie Etchingham in his place ?

So how did ITV win the opportunity to get the "exclusive". Well if you examine the fact that ITV have not been going for the government on the issues of the day, perhaps those Tories who were so critical of the BBC might wake up and "smell the coffee". ITV failed completely to report that Gordon Brown had described Peter Hain's actions as "incompetence". The fact that this was headline news on Sky, BBC, BBC Radio, Independent Radio and in the written press showed the levels ITV news are prepared to go to in order to suck up to the government.